Bang, Bang, Baby

Burke Heffner and Veronica Varlow run with Revolver

by Sharon Nichols and photographs by Amber S. Clark, February 27, 2009

A 1920s Victrola is perched on a cabinet in one corner of the room. Burke Heffner proudly flips open a volume of vintage records and shows it to me, handling it as a most cherished possession. He appears to have stepped out of an earlier epoch himself, sporting a stubby, über-wide necktie. “It’s the future in ties,” he announces.

In strolls Veronica Varlow, a femme fatale in back-seamed stockings and jet-black Bettie Page bangs. Her lips, like the wall behind her, are blood red. She seductively settles back in a Merlot-hued wingback chair, tucking her long legs up beside her and taking a sip of tea. Heffner, her partner-in-crime, plants himself in the adjacent, identical chair and nurses his own steaming cup.

“What kind of tea is that?” I ask.

Heffner replies, sheepishly, “Whispering Heaven.”

Varlow lets out an exuberant laugh. “Um...Can you make us sound a little more hardcore? Like we’re drinking whiskey?”

“Only if you’re actually drinking whiskey,” I reply.

Contemplating the forthcoming barrage of questions, Heffner retorts, “Oh, it’s not worth it!”

Whiskey would seem more befitting to the image these two flashbacks project as they lounge in their boondock cabin in Woodstock. The debonair gentleman and his va-va-voom vixen ooze fantasies of world domination, adventures on the lam, bank heists, seedy bars, smoking pistols, and frantic liaisons. These imaginings, partnered with astronomical creativity, became the seeds of a quasi-autobiographical, yet-to-be-made motion picture, Revolver.

The film’s premise initially emerged from a romantic journal Varlow began the day she met Heffner. She, a model/actress, and he, a filmmaker/photographer, crossed paths in 2000 while working on a short art film, The Catcher in Sleepy Hollow.

“I knew the moment I met him that he was the one,” says Varlow, sparkling. “I knew my entire life was going to change. I spent three days trying to catch his eye and the last day was so pathetic. I was trying desperately to impress him.” Heffner had seemed to ignore her, which only served to stoke the intense yearning Varlow has guzzled on since childhood. Of course, Heffner had noticed her immediately. “I already had her phone number,” he says with a shrug and a smirk. “She thrives on longing in a way that no one I’ve ever met does.”